Miracle cure

For nearly a decade, all efforts failed to get Louise off the drugs that led her into prostitution. Still only 23, she is at last determined to kick the habit - thanks, says Bernard Hare, to improved support and the hand of fate

The working girls of Leeds have been disappearing from the streets at such an alarming rate that there is panic among the ranks of those few that remain. Is there a mystery stalker whisking them away in a white van? Have the West Yorkshire police adopted South American-style search-and-destroy tactics and "disappeared" them? Or have they simply decided, like good girls, to obey the law and move on?

The police claim that no one is missing, so the only other possible explanation is that we have chanced upon that rarest of things: a government policy that is actually working. When Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart announced in June a zero tolerance clampdown on street prostitution, combined with better care, counselling and drug intervention, who would have taken her at her word? Just more government bluster, surely?

Determined to get to the bottom of it, I decide to check around the same redlight district I wrote about in Society Guardian in January. At the same time of night, there were only three girls on the streets over the space of an hour. Six months ago, that figure would have been nearer 20 or 30. I've spent a year researching Louise's story and making contact with working girls. I hardly took any phone numbers, because I felt somehow that they would always be there. Now they are gone and all my hard work has been for nought.

Lucky I still have Louise. She is 23 and is my main contact among the street girls. Having already written about her in January, and again in March, I had planned to leave her in peace, but there have been developments of a dramatic and amazing nature. And she, too, has been caught up in this whirlwind of social change.

I admit that I had almost given up hope for her. She was an incorrigible smackhead, a liar, a thief, a prostitute and a thug. She could be brutal and ruthless, but she would never hear a word against me - and that's a quality I find admirable in a person. So I stuck by her, and am proud to announce that she too - and, believe me, this is little short of a miracle - is free of the yoke of drugs and prostitution.

As she pours me a cup of tea, I ask her where all the girls have gone. "Basically, the police and the courts are on the ball, and they're taking no prisoners," she replies. "Some of the girls have even handed themselves over for voluntary treatment, because business is so bad."

With a "multi-agency, multi-dimensional" approach, Leeds really does seem to have succeeded in removing the scourge of street prostitution. "You're probably the last kerb-crawler in Leeds," Louise adds.

Like a plague

Such a change has come over Louise that she now frowns upon me going out talking to "druggies" and "prossies". She avoids them like the plague. And I'm the last kerb-crawler in Leeds because the kerb-crawlers, like the girls, have gone. Reason: the police stop them on a regular basis, ask them embarrassing questions, grass them to their wives, and often charge them and put them through the courts. I was even stopped a couple of times myself while pursuing my legitimate inquiries.

The police are targeting the girls with equal vigour, handing out antisocial behaviour orders, or getting persistent offenders into the courts, where they can be given drug treatment and testing orders that are backed up by the threat of prison. One way or another, they are making it difficult for anyone to do business.

Only the most entrepreneurial girls are still making a living, with the help of their mobile phones and the more relaxed laws on brothel-keeping. The rest have been forced to face up to the fact that they are addicted to drugs, but no longer have a reliable source of income. Drug addicts can get funny when they can't feed their habits, so it is fortunate that the government's new approach involves a sturdy, and much improved, drug intervention and support strategy.

One side-effect of low money supply is that addicts who usually smoke heroin will turn to injecting, as it is the cheaper (if more dangerous) option. Louise had fallen into this trap and her health was deteriorating by the day. Then the miracle happened: she found she was pregnant.

Government policies have seldom made an impression on Louise, and I've tried without success for the best part of a decade to get Louise to kick her habit. But I don't believe government policy or my support finally made her decide it was time to quit, although it is helpful that both are there in the background. What has finally moved her to action is that fate has offered her a chance of redemption. She has had two children taken away because of her addictions and is determined not to lose a third. "This time I'll do it, Bern," she promises. "I've got a chance to be a mum again and I'm not going to mess it up."

She has been a stubborn recidivist. It was three years ago that she last made a serious effort to stop. Social services were threatening to take her six-year-old and her newborn. She knew then that the only way to keep the children was to kick her habit. She tried her damnedest, but the support wasn't there. After she had struggled for weeks, the drug addiction unit treating her pulled the plug on her on the mere suspicion that she had used drugs. Similarly, social services showed her little sympathy, or even human decency. Not surprisingly, she failed in her efforts, and the children were taken from her.

"This time it's different," she tells me. "This time they seem to have a bit more sympathy. I've used a couple of times, but they haven't kicked me off the programme. They seem to understand that it's not that easy to kick drugs straight off. You need a couple of chances as you're bound to have a relapse or two."

The carrot-stick balance seems to have shifted dramatically. Where once it was a problem getting and maintaining treatment for drug addiction, it is now freely available. Where once it took weeks to get an appointment with a doctor, it can now be achieved in a matter of days. Where once the support given was harsh and unsympathetic, it is now warmer, more caring, and the girls seem to be responding. "I haven't just got one support worker, I've got about four of them - I'm not even sure who they all are," she says jokingly.

Louise's greatest support has been a worker from Genesis, a voluntary organisation supported by Leeds city council, Safer Leeds (tackling drugs and crime), Lloyds TSB Foundation, the NHS and the Big Lottery Fund. They offer support, advocacy and information to prostitutes. Louise has been known to them for several years, as they run a van round the streets at night handing out condoms, advice or just friendly cups of tea. They also run a drop-in service, visit saunas and supply support workers to girls who are trying to escape from the vicious circle of drugs and prostitution.

There for you

"They're really on your side," Louise says. "Since I told them I was pregnant, they've helped me register with a doctor, get on a methadone programme, the housing list, everything. They'll even run you to your appointments if they think you're not going to make it under your own steam. They just seem to be there for you, and you can tell them everything."

Genesis has helped Louise to access a housing support worker and a drugs counsellor, and it liaises with the dreaded social services, keeping them at arm's length while the tricky work of kicking drugs goes on. "I've done everything anyone has asked of me," Louise says. "All right, I messed up in the beginning, but I've given six clean samples on the trot, I'm getting to all my appointments and I've packed in my chaotic lifestyle. If they take the baby this time, I don't know what I'll do."

Hopefully, social services have softened too. Louise is back in the land of the living for the first time in a decade. She's looking healthier than I've ever seen her. All this because she sees a hope of redemption. If that redemption is snatched away from her by a brutal and overzealous social services, I don't know what I'll do either, but I won't rest until I've exposed them as a danger to society.

I ask Louise how it feels to have not just one, but several statutory and voluntary agencies breathing down her neck. "It's nice," she says. "It shows someone cares."